Trump, Clinton and the perils of wide-open primaries

iPolitics Insights

Anyone can be president of the United States — and that’s a problem

This photo combo of file images shows U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump, left, and Hillary Clinton. Income inequality has been a rallying cry of the 2016 election, with more Americans turning fearful and angry about a shrinking middle class. Trump has pledged to restore prosperity by ripping up trade deals and using tariffs to return manufacturing jobs from overseas. Clinton has backed a debt-free college option and higher minimum wages to help the middle class. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Chuck Burton)

Does it bother anyone else that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump likely would be allowed to run for any provincial or federal party in Canada?

I’m not talking about citizenship, which automatically would disqualify them. I’m thinking about the vetting requirements that most parties (all organized and competitive political parties, at any rate) make potential candidates navigate.

These ‘Green Light’ committees have existed in some form for many decades. Although fringe parties might be content to find any warm body willing to wave the party banner, vetting is becoming increasingly necessary to any serious contender for power.

Social media and the 24-hour news cycle have made it possible for even the most obscure, no-hope candidate to radically shift the course of an entire election campaign. That’s probably what happened in the case of Allan Hunsperger, an Alberta church minister who predicted in a 2011 blog post that homosexuals “will suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell.” A year later, when Hunsperger was an electoral candidate for the Wildrose in the 2012 Alberta election, the blog was discovered by a PC organizer — who made sure it received a very wide audience.

Hunsperger serves as a cautionary tale. His blog post notwithstanding, Wildrose was unlikely to win in Edmonton Southwest; until 2015, that part of the city was solidly PC. So Hunsperger was a placeholder for Wildrose, with very little chance of victory.

Still, he managed to reinforce the perception that Wildrose was nothing more than a bunch of redneck homophobes. Leader Danielle Smith, herself an urbane libertarian, was unable to shed her party’s negative image. Despite having topped the polls consistently since becoming leader, Smith and Wildrose lost to Alison Redford and the PCs.

In short, smart parties know they have to vet everyone representing them — even the no-hope candidates.

When I ran for the Progressive Conservatives in 2001, the process was very simple. I met with the local riding president. She asked if I had ever been convicted of a Criminal Code offence or declared bankruptcy. No to both questions. She took me at my word and I got the party endorsement.

Trump’s long history of business bankruptcies, a failed university mired in lawsuits, his habit of blasting everyone, from the Pope on down, with a barrage of unfiltered tweets, misogynist insults and racist rants — any one of these things would be enough to turn the green light to red.

Six years later, I applied to be the Conservative Party of Canada candidate for Edmonton-St. Albert. This time the process was much more formal, involving a sit-down interview with a five-member party panel. I had to sign consent forms allowing the local party brass to run me through criminal background and border security checks, and to confirm details of my income tax returns and credit rating.

More recently, the process has expanded to include social media searches; party staffers comb through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram postings looking for embarrassing moments. They’re making sure that the prospective candidate is suitable — but in the post-Hunsperger era, they’re at least as concerned about the reputation of the party and the leader as they are about the quality of the candidate.

Most voters cast their ballots based primarily on their impressions of the party and the party leader. Local candidates make a difference in close contests, but in most districts the candidate forms only a small part of the electoral calculation.

Party discipline has evolved to a point where the candidate is indistinguishable from the party. Which is why people tend to assume that, if the local candidate is homophobic, the entire party must be as well.

I’ve even heard of parties hiring private investigators to look for dirt on potential candidates. There are numerous examples of candidates in recent federal and provincial elections being disqualified by just about every party. Take it from me — being a ‘loose cannon’ is not a partisan attribute.

In Canada, the parties control the nomination process. Until the leader signs the nomination papers, the candidate is not assumed to be the representative of that party.

Which brings us back to the two candidates for the office of president of the United States.

Donald Trump could not possibly have survived any of the vetting processes we have in Canada. His long history of business bankruptcies, a failed university mired in lawsuits, his habit of blasting everyone, from the Pope on down, with a barrage of unfiltered tweets, misogynist insults and racist rants — any one of these things would be enough to turn the green light to red. Add alleged Mafia ties, sexist beauty pageants, housing discrimination, accusations of tenant intimidation and breaking New Jersey casino rules to the list, and it ought to be more than enough to kill a political career before it starts.

Hillary Clinton, of course, brings a truckload of her own baggage to the contest — her use of a personal unsecured e-mail server as Secretary of State, her spin on the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, her millions of dollars in speaking fees and the dated Whitewater scandal, involving a failed real estate investment and alleged non-arms-length business transactions.

Although Clinton will not be charged over the e-mail affair, an ongoing investigation by the State Dept. and a possible Senate Committee probe are just the sort of problems a vetting process is intended to prevent.

So here’s a word of comfort to all those aspiring politicians out there who worry about an embarrassing video of a college frat party going viral: Go big or go home. If Trump and Clinton can do it, couldn’t anyone?

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